We arrived at surfers after quite an uneventful greyhound journey - the driver wasn’t a nutter like all the others
After a few mins finding out where accommodation was available it was a short trek to our hostel - surfers in paradise - and after being quoted 24 dollars found out that they had a 'nice' 20 bed dorm for only 18 dollars a night, bargain! Now lets say this hostel wasn’t exactly built recently and the walls looked a bit worse for wear. The dorm was ok......but for the fact that it only had one (yes one) toilet/shower for all 20 people = so if someone (normally a woman taking ages) was having a shower then no one else could use the toilet....and the one communal toilet they had...... = out of order! Cool
They did have quite a cool TV room with a projection screen and also the Second test of the Ashes were on so for the first few days the cricket was a good thing to watch (until obviously Freddy and the boys f***ed it up royally!) The hostel arranged a bar crawl every night (olden day Ibiza esq) which was pretty cheap n ok. The second night we did a bigger bar crawl - normally 50 dollars but we mentioned our managers name Mike and bang it was $20, sorted!
The only problem with the time of year we chose for surfers was = SCHOOLIES, basically when the little f***ers leave school at 18 over here they ALL head to one of the main beaches along the Gold Coast and get drunk. Now I know this sounds just like a normal fri or sat night in any town at home with the young uns getting drunk, but this is to a different scale, whereas a lot Brits go to Ibiza this is spread out = here it was 60,000 18 yr olds in surfers ready to get drunk, and they normally were, by 8pm!! This bar crawl we started at 5pm and god they were on the floor quite soon after! But still mouthing off that us 'pommies' couldn’t drink!ha
The third bar we went to Garth got held up for a bit cos his 7yr old provisional licence looked nothing like him! I went in and got talking to some of these 'schoolie' types and some other ozzie girls up for their hols. Another term I later found out (and which I apparently was-even tho I was a foreigner) was a 'Toolie' = these are older 'non schoolies' who go to the schoolie places and try and pick them up! Wasn’t until the next bar that I saw Garth again, he d been made to sign his name etc to get into the last place!ha
The next few days we just bummed around and did not much - bliss! The schoolies were starting to get annoying tho, they had bloody loads of attitude! One day I went with the ozzie girls from the other night to a quite cool outdoor market with 600 stalls (and a flag stall with an IOM flag Claire! Needless to say I was a bit shocked to see such a tiny places flag over here!). Then the last day I went to movie world, a Warner Bros theme park with the girls while Garth was at the water park or somewhere! It was pretty cool, kinda like Disneyland but a lot smaller. The rides were pretty cool but one of the best bits was 1) they had a Harry potter shop!ha 2) the 3D show of Shrek they had was wicked, the chairs were on hydraulics and water and stuff was chucked as you during the show - wicked!
Overall Surfers was an ok place, not that picturesque but quite a buzzing place, the only downfall being the schoolies!! http://essex.facebook.com/album.php?aid=4667&l=b0767&id=283600208